Paulzx

Hoping to find the wind screen wiper arms for front and back windscreen. I was hoping to just buy some new ones assuming they are just standard parts, although I'm having trouble getting the part numbers. I'm guessing others have sourced these items before? It's for a 2005 GT4. Thanks.

Okay, thanks for the comment. It's a yes then really because it will go to the dealer and they will want to do the whole checklist but that's fine

Hello Chaps, I've been looking through this thread to get an idea of how important it is considered, for the frequency and mileage of the servicing. I've had my GT4 serviced every year at the Nissan dealer but on several occasions, it has done less than 1000 miles between services. As of now, it's due it's next service and it's 1000 miles since last year's one. Bearing in mind it will only do another 1000 miles until next year's service would be due, do you all think it's acceptable to skip a year and do the next service next year? I'm interested to know what others in a similar situation are doing because until now, I've been a bit of a stickler for getting the stamp in the book done on time every year...mostly to avoid questions when I sell the car. It's a bit ridiculous though really because the car does so low mileage, it seems a waste of money to do it every year. Using the dealer isn't my issue, 1000 miles between services is the real issue, whoever does the work. What do you guys think?

These wrap threads always catch my eye, probably because I'm in the wrapping trade and am always surprised at how keen people are to do this to their cars. The recent growing trend in doing privately owned cars is great for business, most who earn a living doing it are not exactly going to discourage you from doing it but we always tell people to think twice, and some of the points illustrated by Tarmac highlight this. Protects bodywork - true, well it protects your paint but so does wax. No vinyl wrap is going to be as good as your paint or as colourfast. Yes some vinyls are very durable but on the whole, their UV fading properties are not as good as paint. Plus they damage easily as has been mentioned. Cheaper than a respray? close call in my experience, anyone expecting a good wrap job to be much cheaper than a paint job will be disappointed I think. You can rip it off when you get bored - have you ever tried to take off a full wrap? It's a mission, it's not really designed to come off easily. Plus removing glue left behind is a bloody nightmare if you have that scenario. So in summary, this is not an easy five minute job. Plus you can do more damage to your paintwork removing vinyls and adhesive than you gained by protecting it with a wrap. It won't put buyers off - be very wary on this one. Any buyer in his right mind would walk away from a wrapped car because you simply don't know what's underneath it. We constantly get people coming in to us asking if we can cover up paintwork scratches and the like with vinyls so they can sell the car. Sorry I haven't been more positive about vinyl wraps on cars but I wanted to share my experience with anyone who is considering spending a lot of money on this. What you have to remember is that wrapping was always really intended for commercial use in advertising, that's where it's value lies, in brand promotion. There is no real value in wrapping a private car with no advertising, yet you'll pay similar money for it, just because it can be done. In the commercial sector they are willing to pay for their vans to be professionally wrapped and removed, but I have never seen any real advantage or value in doing this to your car, unless of course you have a vast amount of pocket money to blow and don't care either way.

Neil, I totally agree, I just wanted some opinions because the cracks are so tiny that I don't know for sure it has made the wheel unsafe, I'm just going on the word of the dealers, and the dealers are not always right, The car is now off the road, i drove it back because i had to. I think you may have mis-understood me, i'm not intending to carry on using the car regardless, i just wanted to know if there were any alternatives. Believe it or not, i can think of better things to do than write my car off due to a collapsed wheel

Probably will end up going that route anyway, although presumably that crack has to get a lot worse before it is genuinely un-safe? i was wondering if it's worth a second opinion? I'get some pics in the morning and post them up

Well funnily enough the chap at the garage said he thought it might have been a crack in the paint because if you look carefully at the paint finish, this particular wheel looks to have been re-furbed and a very slight 'orange peel' effect in the paint is noticeable whereas the factory ones look completely smooth. The cracks are not on the front face of the spoke, they are about 10 to 15mm length starting from the edge of the side of the spoke, i may see if i can get a photo but to be honest it's hard to spot. Has anyone actually had one of these wheels collapse on the spokes?

Hoping for some pointers here... Had my GT4 serviced at the dealers yesterday, and they have given an advisory that the car is unsafe to drive due to one of the alloy spokes being cracked. Having had a look at this when I collected the car, there appears to be a very feint hairline crack in the offside rear alloy, I wouldn't have ever noticed it but the technician who did the service noticed it, removed the wheel and looked behind the spoke and declared it a genuine crack, therefore the integrity of the wheel is compromised and now unsafe to drive. I had to bring it the short journey home anyway because I can't leave it at the garage for however long it takes me to sort this out, of course they were willing to keep it there and order another wheel for me at the cost of £900 but naturally I wanted to have a sound around before doing anything. I doubt this can be repaired? If there is no option except to buy a new wheel, where is the best place to get that other than nissan?

Ah... not any more. A few years back a burglar broke into a house in the same town I lived in. The home owner caught the guy and gave him a severe leathering with a baseball bat. The burglar tried to take the owner to court and the judge just threw it out laughing at the guy. Since then there have been several cases on the news of burglars being beaten up or even killed and its been regarded as perfectly reasonable in order to defend your home. Where you do have to be careful unfortunately is with regards to what is classed as "reasonable". For instance, if I happened to be cleaning my gun and then shot a burglar then that might be regarded as a little excessive. But, if i beat him around the head with a lump of wood, then that may be classed as okay. Hmm.. I would be very careful of this because we are not yet at the point legally in this country where you can extract your revenge on a burglar without consequence, like you can in some countries. Not sure about the baseball bat story because you would still have to show it was reasonable defense to use it. The problem with the reasonable force issue is that firstly, you can only retaliate with similar threat to what you are confronted with, i.e. if the burglar isn't armed then you can't use a weapon either, you can't use more force than they do. The second point is that what some consider to be 'reasonable' after the event doesn't have much bearing on how people react in the heat of the moment. In some countries you can dish out a good hiding and ask questions later, simply because someone is in your home when they shouldn't be, but the law isn't like that here, even though they are talking about revising this type of thing.

Blimey, some real nonsense been written in this thread, to be expected in the hamilton vs. button fan debate i suppose. Being a particularly long time F1 fan but not really a mclaren fan or JB/LH fan I would say from an objective point of view it would appear that the two mclaren drivers are very capable but various abilities come to the fore in particular circumstances. Button doesn't appear to be as impatient and therefore is better placed to put in a performance as he did. lewis is starting to look a bit desperate with the realisation that they cannot really out perform red bull regularly enough, which is probably hard to swallow when you come in to F1 already in a winning team, or a team with a car that can win you the championship. I think what a lot of people are missing is that the most interesting part of sunday is how vettel dropped the car under pressure from button, he's obviously struggling with the notion that his car is no longer quick enough to allow him to scamper off into the distance without a worry, especially seeing as wet conditions somewhat negated the extra aerodynamic performance of the red bull, and we all saw what happened when it came down to just the driving. It was by no means the best drive of all time but it was impressive.

why does a wrap de value a car? For two reasons - and this may be an opinion rather than across the board but it's still common sense... For a prospective buyer, the scenario of removing a wrap should you decide you no longer want it, is something very unnatractive, in fact most people would end up paying to have that professionally removed. Secondly, if you're buying a car with a wrap, you can't easily see the condition of the paint underneath, i.e. doing the wrap in the first place to hide your scratched or damaged paint. I would never buy a wrapped car, just walk away and buy something you can see properly all over.

Why oh why would you bother? Surely better off to put your money towards having the damaged paint re-done? And it de-values the car - unless you are willing to remove the wrap before selling, in which case you're back to square one...?

Coulthard is doing what he did before with Jake Humphries and Eddie Jordan as well as race commentary. I feel a bit sorry for Legard but he wasn't particularly inspiring as a commentator. Since Brundle arrived the trend is obviously now towards ex drivers and people who have worked first hand in the sport rather than just peole who can talk about it.

That is a lovely car, if you have the money how can you stop yourself?

From the cars you have come from Im not surprised, My 172 feels quicker until I look at the dash. There is no kick like a turbo or high end power like a 172 just a nice smooth curve. Its great for driving spirited without touching the limiter. My 300zx twin turbo felt a lot faster than my 350z GT4, it isn't, but the power delivery in the 300 was a lot more brutal, realistically though, the 300 seemed more dangerous because it wasn't as stable at higher speeds, particularly in bends. But standard Z's are only 276bhp - it's lively but it's not the same experience as some of the 400bhp sports cars around, or a TVR etc but at least when you run a 350z you know it's not absolutely necessary to have AA breakdown recovery...

Thanks Alex, sounds like this may be the way to go. How much is the full service pack? Naturally the garage isn't going to like this very much because they will lose the profit from the parts, but I will get a price from them just to do the labour, they could still do me on the labour costs so we'll see what the outcome is.

Thanks chaps. I'm in Isle of Wight, so talking to the local nissan dealer here. What they're saying is the plugs are £18 each but the labour is 2hrs extra hence the steep price. I'm guessing it would be back down to £147 if I don't have the plugs done. One of the problems here is that I don't know what everyone else is being charged for a standard service and a P1 & plugs service so I don't really have any comparison. I suppose 5yrs is a long time to have the original plugs. Is it a fact that the plugs will deteriorate over that time even on such low mileage?

I was wondering what you guys would do here, I have two issues I want to resolve, firstly the servicing cost and secondly the changing of the spark plugs. To summarise my situation, I bought my GT4 in march this year, it's had a full nissan service history, all services were carried out 12 monthly around december time and it's due it's 5th service which is apparently a P1 service with new spark plugs. The car has done 21,000 miles from new. The costs I've been quoted are as follows: £147.00 for a regular service or £354.00 for the spark plug change P1, reading some of the figures on the site that sounds a bit dear to me? Second thing is whether to change the plugs. Obviously nissan say it has to be done on this P1, the guy at the garage said that realistically because of the low use of the car the plugs are probably only half way through their life and therefore I could do the service without the plug change and maybe just do it at the next service or whenever deemed appropriate. Whilst I don't like the idea of wasting money on new plugs, I don't want to do anything to mess up the servicing history either. What do the rest of you do here, should the plugs be done religiously on the P1 or do you not bother? Cheers Paul

Have to say that I used up the last of my super resin polish recently and it seemed like a good product. Having gone back to the vehicle after using the polish there were definately flies on the car so i do think there is something in this theory

Actually it is pretty realistic for a game. if you play F1 2010 with the fuel and tyre simulation on, rules on, damage on and no traction control, you've got a realistic challenge on your hands and multiplayer is very good if you have some decent people to race against too

Be very careful dealing with this particular individual. I bought a blank key fob from him, he assued me it would work for the car etc but after having the key cut, it transpired that the blank didn't fit in the fob because the locating hole for the small screw was the wrong size. He messed me about like you wouldn't believe over this, even claiming he hadn't had the returned key back (which had been signed for recorded delivery). After i threatened him with getting ebay involved he finally returned to me the key, cut for my car, already attached to a fob. I don't know exactly what he did to make it work but i had the feeling that it wouldn't have happened at all had i not threatened him, so anyone doing this, beware!

i recently raced a cayman s round thruxton, nice car but quite honestly i think my GT4 is comparable, considering the price, the cayman isn't exactly in a totally different league. it does have good poise, and it does look good, the interior is nothing to write home about and if i'm honest, the gear selection is not the most positive i've ever used. but i've never owned a porsche so i would consider 'trading up' from the zed to one of these, i can see why a lot of people think the cayman is a natural progression from a zed, but i also think a lot of that has to do with the brand kudos also. it's definately not in a different league for performance say compared to a GTR which obviously is a much different proposition to a zed. but zeds are a 'relatively' cheap great car for the money. i've had nothing but admiring comments since i bought mine

am i right in thinking you have to manually switch TC off each time you start the car because it automatically sets it to on each time you start the engine?

GT5 isn't out yet, i'm guessing you mean Prologue? The 350z & 370z should be well modeled in Gt5 as they use those cars for testing quite a bit Unfortunately can't say the same for the 350z in NFS Shift..

Over the years I think the Stig was in fact six or seven drivers in total. Ben Collins may well have had the longest stint but there were a few. In fact, Damon Hill I think, stepped in to do one of the F1 stints on that show. Does anyone even care though? I doubt it, Ben Collins isn't even a household name so to most of us it still could be anyone. On a side note I think Top Gear has de-generated into little more than a cartoon now. It very rarely offers up any valid car journalism now as opposed to what it was like some years ago